Page 73 of Delivered to the Devil

Pain screeches through my body as he lifts me off the floor, but somehow, I manage not to sink back into despair. I focus on his body like he told me to, and the feeling of his strong arms steadies me enough to stay afloat.

“Good girl,” he says as he places me on the bed and presses a hand to my cheek. “Just keep breathing, okay?”

I nod again.

“I’ll be right back.” He leaves the room with hurried steps, and a few minutes later, he returns with a glass of orange juice, a first aid kit, and a wet cloth.

He pulls the red chair up and holds the straw to my lips as he dabs the cool cloth across my face. It’s only now that I realize I’m sweating, and the cloth and juice are a welcome relief that make me forget about the throbbing sensations for a moment.

But the reprieve is short. Soon, the glass is empty, and Janos removes the cloth to unpack the first aid kit. A regretful frown forms on his brow as he casts me a look. “I need to clean your wounds. I won’t risk them getting infected.”

Tears gather in my eyes anew as I watch him unpack the antiseptic, suddenly remembering the agony when he cleaned the wounds the first time.

I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping I can somehow disappear into myself and float out of my body.

“Hold this.” Janos pushes something fluffy into my hand.

I open my eyes and stare into the green sparkling eyes of the teddy, then up into Janos’s steel-gray ones. They’re focused on the task at hand, taut with the gravity of the pain he’s about to inflict on me. Actually, his entire face is taut. I’ve never seen him like this, and for a moment, it shoves back my own pain as I realize that I’m not the only one hurting.

Just as he’s about to put on the latex gloves, I reach out and take his hand. When his eyes lock on mine, I want to tell him that everything is going to be okay. But I can’t bring myself to lie, the same way he never does. So we just stare at each other for a long moment, holding tightly on to each other before we descend back into hell as he starts the cleaning process all over.

CHAPTER 36

“My Immortal”

by Evanescence

Rebecca

Minutes, hours, maybe days crawl by. I slip in and out of episodes of mind-numbing pain, restless sleep, and frozen stretches of time—being clear-headed but unable to do anything but lie still. In rare moments, everything calms when Janos sits by my side, stroking my hair, and I wish I could stay there forever. But then I move a little, and pain shoots through me from all sides, sending me into an uncontrollable burst of tears.

Janos is here most of the time. That’s how it seems, anyway. Sometimes, he’s gone when I wake up, and I get the feeling that he tries to only leave when I’m asleep. It wouldn’t be hard; I think I sleep most of the time—both day and night.

Whenever I wake to find him gone, it never takes long before he returns. He always goes straight for the bedroom with hastened steps like he’s afraid something has happened to me. The few times I’m in the bathroom when he comes, he comes running, slamming the door open, and scanning the room with wild eyes until he finds me sitting on the toilet or washing my hands.

He spends a lot of time in the armchair, watching over me, and when the pain gets the upper hand, pulling me intodesperate fits of screaming and writhing, he’s always here, talking to me and letting me feel his hands. Gradually, those fits become longer and more violent, and I succumb to a fever, leaving the moments of clarity few and far apart.

Since I tore off the bandages in front of the mirror, I haven’t seen my wounds. But I don’t need to see to know that it’s bad. Even if I didn’t feel the gravity of the situation in my body, the concern etched deep into Janos’s features is a testament to how bad the situation is.

Soon, I can barely tell my nightmares from reality, and the line between consciousness or unconsciousness is blurry at best.

***

One night when Janos is about to drag me through the hell of cleaning my wounds, he says, “I can’t get you a doctor, but I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”

I don’t ask why or waste my energy on regrets. I know Gabor’s sadistic mind well enough by now to know that he’s the one who has issued the restriction, and I’m already at a point where I’m realizing I won’t be one of the lucky girls, who end up with an expensive apartment, free to do whatever I want. And perhaps more importantly, I’m starting to accept it.

Not long ago, I got Janos to divulge more about what happens to Gabor’s girls, and it turned out the ending was far from as bright as he had made it out to be. Because no matter how nice an apartment or how much freedom they gain, those girls are never truly free again. They remain trapped by the terrible memories of what Gabor did, and most of them end up as addicts to numb their minds—selling the apartment to buy drugs. When that money runs out, they prostitute themselves to get more.

No, the lucky ones are those who overdose before the apartment money runs out.

Even if I could avoid this tragic fate, I would end up living a meaningless life in my old world, where I never fit in. I would be haunted by the ghost of Gabor and the way my body succumbed to him. I’d be stuck with mental scars and probably too weak to escape my oppressive family again. Just another version of hell.

I’d rather end it all here with Janos at my side.

So in some warped sense, I guess I’m one of the lucky ones, after all. I’ll end up in a hole in the woods instead of a dilapidated house on Szabadkai út with a needle in my arm.

Whatever search for me the police conducts will be brief, if there’ll be any at all. They won’t have many leads, and even if they do, they’ll dispose of them at the first sight of a wad of cash. Soon I’ll be forgotten in the world.

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